WE'RE WELL DOWN THIS SLIPPERY SLOPE
Recreation Fees Big Part of Public Land Privatization Plan
While every major environmental group ignores the issue of runaway recreation fees on the National Forests, the Forest Service keeps creating more ways for us to pay more and partners with corporate interests that would like nothing better than to privatize public lands.By Bill Schneider, 3-04-10
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For five years, I’ve been railing against the recreational fee frenzy going on within the Forest Service, and after reading hundreds of comments (online and offline), I’ve noticed a common theme that I should address. Why, many commenters ask, am I so concerned about these relatively small, pay-for-play fees when we’re facing colossal environmental issues such as climate change, roadless lands protection, mining law reform, and energy development?
My answer is, this is big, too. The trend toward more and larger recreation fees fits perfectly with the plans of those who would like nothing better than to privatize our public lands.
I know it only seems like a measly $5 here or $25 there, but it’s the old nibbled-to-death strategy--you hardly notice it happening until one day, you realize you can no longer find an affordable place to hike or hunt or camp. Interestingly, I believe every major green group opposes privatizing public lands, yet not one does or says anything about this obvious attempt to do it. Go figure.
The primary voice among the green community comes from a tiny nonprofit called Wild Wilderness. Here, executive director Scott Silver serves the role of that proverbial voice in the wilderness nobody seems to hear.
Not a believer? Consider this admission by Warren Meyer, a board member of the National Forest Recreation Association (NFRA), the main lobby for private concessionaires. On his personal blog, he stated: “As many of you know, I am in the business of privatizing public recreation.”
That revealing quote is just one little gem in a massive treasure chest of documentation Silver has amassed on how recreation fees foreshadow public land privatization. I wish I had space for more of it here, but you can see it all on his website.
The privatization agenda was the vision of President Ronald Reagan and was first implemented by former FS Chief Dale Robertson with major help from the main lobby for privatization, the American Recreation Coalition (ARC). For the past 30 years, with the ARC and NFRA leading the way, private concessionaires have exerted increasing pressure upon the FS to privatize public recreation, and it’s working.
A recent controversy over a proposed rule change cutting discounts and passes for seniors and the disabled is simply into another step toward ultimate goal of privatization of public recreation. It does so by lowering the bar for the creation of new recreation fee sites and allowing concessionaires to charge for, and retain, more fees at these new sites and current sites.
Concerning this current red alert over the Forest Service’s attempt to renege on “lifetime” promises given senior and disabled public land users and the Idaho congressional delegation’s opposition to it, Silver has a more sweeping viewpoint.
He applauds the Idaho delegation jumping in to oppose the proposed rule, but he would’ve preferred they be “more forceful” in pointing out the more “profound impacts,” such as the fact the proposed rule hurts everybody, not just the elderly and disabled, and that it’s all about “more privatization.”
“The proposed rule change is not merely a reprehensible denial of implied privilege,” he told NewWest.Net, in an email, “it is flagrantly illegal.”
In his official comments on the proposed rule, he provided detailed documentation as to why the proposed rule is not only a broken promise, but it also violates the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA), the authority the FS uses--or more accurately, misuses--to charge more and higher fees.
Silver also contends that the proposed rule is the result of closed door meetings between the FS and special interest organizations such as the ARC and is a direct response to pressure from concessionaire “partners” who only want more profit off public lands. The FS, he insists, has a “greater allegiance” to private concessionaires than to the public the agency is supposed to serve.
Even worse, Silver believes the plan to ax senior discounts is meant to attract the public’s outrage and hide real goal--allowing concessionaires to charge more and higher fees for everybody. He predicts political pressure will prompt the FS to compromise and continue to give seniors and the disabled some reduced discounts to make it appear like a victory for the public. Meanwhile, the FS will get what it really wants--more latitude for concessionaires to charge fees and make more profit off managing public recreation.
And as noted frequently in my past columns, there’s also the issue of double taxation. We pay for the privilege to use our public lands every year on April 15, which has been the main impetus behind S. 868, a bill introduced by Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Mike Crapo (R-ID) to repeal FLREA.
(Incidentally, just in case you’re wondering why we see fewer recreation fees in the National Forests of Idaho and Montana than everywhere else, I’m sure it has something to do with FS bosses trying to avoid controversy in the districts of these two powerful senators.)
So what’s the answer?
For starters, tacking S. 868 onto the next must-pass legislation as a rider would certainly do the trick, but we also need two more things to happen.
First, Congress needs to replace the fee income within the appropriations process to take pressure off FS employees to make more money on fees and concessions to save their jobs, and second, the Obama administration needs to put both feet on the administrative brakes to stop the reckless rush to hire private concessionaires to manage on our National Forests.
Exact figures are elusive, but roughly, the FS takes in $62 million per year in recreation fees and hardly any revenue from private concessionaires (another story for another time). I must ask, is this really a lot of money by federal budget standards? Let’s put $62 million in perspective.
Today, we can instantly find billions to fight endless wars (a trillion+ so far), bail out the too-big-to-fail banks (aka Wall Street Casinos), and provide unbudgeted federal aid for natural disasters. My pet evil, Goldman Sachs, makes a $41 million profit every day, even on weekends, and $62 million would just barely cover three years of Wells Fargo boss John Stumpf’s annual compensation. Getting out of the Middle East Wars one day early would save $42 million, so let’s leave two weeks earlier and replace FS recreation fee income for the next decade or more.
Come on, Congress. How hard is this? Just put it in the budget and do something for all of us. That’s only $116,000 per each of the 535 congressional and senatorial districts.
If you really need to raise my income taxes 0.001 percent to cover the cost, hey, go for it. This shouldn’t be necessary, but I’d willing to pay a little more as long as it’s on tax day instead of an extra five bucks at the next toll booth I see on a FS road.
But I’d prefer something like a 90 percent tax on any form of annual income over $500,000, all earmarked for managing public recreation on public lands by public employees. Or better yet, build five instead of the six nuclear submarines currently under construction, which would save enough to reimburse the FS for lost fee income for the rest of the 21st Century. Are nuclear subs really a good investment in the future compared to keeping public lands public?
As I write this, the Obama administration is hardly blinking at spending $200 million per year for several years to put just one terrorist on trial in New York City, with lots more terrorists waiting for their years in court. At least 20 states haven’t even accepted $5 billion each in federal stimulus funds because they have to match it, so that’s something like a $100 billion just sitting there for the taking. Meanwhile, we can’t find $62 million in a $2.65 trillion budget to stop the privatization of our public lands?
The point is, we can find this money. If our elected representatives don’t do it and our major green groups won’t even make it a priority issue, well, I guess we Americans can assume they favor privatizing our public lands.
Footnote: For more NewWest.Net coverage of the recreation fee issue, click here.
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Comments
Thanks for the article! I know that there are plenty of people who would be willing to help out, they just need to know what to do to have the biggest and best impact.
You've made it clear that the costs to fund our public lands is minimal, especially in comparison to some obviously wasteful, current, budget and even non budgeted items. But, you've missed on the call to action.
Sure, "tacking S. 868 onto the next must-pass legislation as a rider would certainly do the trick, but we also need two more things to happen" is a clear order, but most folks, myself included, don't know where to begin....that's another conversation.
In the mean time, who are the people in congress that we need to contact to voice our demands? Perhaps a small list of things we can do or even a few links to the right people might be a good idea.
RH
The Corporate Tyranny that owns our country and its government is determined to appropriate all remaining public resources for their private profit. It's an undeclared war Americans, most of whom are sleeping through it, have already largely lost.
Your article should run nationally but that won't happen. The Corporate Tyranny owns all the media outlets and they don't want any truth to leak out on this issue.
Paul Edwards
*private Business can do it better!<----who promotes that? someone with much to gain.
where does the forest jobs bill...with Tester fit in on all this??
What should we do? How do we stop the take over of our land. How do we educate those who are naive, not necessarily out of stupidity or sleepiness, but because they live far from the issues and therefore are not connected. For example, people on the east coast care more about traffic and terrorism then beetle kill and the loss of public land because these are the things that affect their daily lives. Also, one might add, they accept toll roads so why not put a toll on land usage.
I think most of us are aware of the problems and the corporate takeover of our lives but lack the tools to fight.
I don't have a problem with private enterprise - I have a problem with the private enterprise manipulating government rules and laws so as to dip into my pocket to make profit. It's unethical and smells of the devil.
I'm against fees. Got to thinking though, if consessioners took over recreation in the forest and on the plains it seems the argument could be made that it would be more cost effective in the long run. That is if we fired the rangers, thus saving paying them for the rest of their lives. In our deliberations with the BLM over user fees it has become apparent that they could never charge enough to cover the cost of administration let alone enforcement.
Reducing expenditures on fire suppression, controlled burns, lawn mowing, fence painting and all the other things the USFS fire budget wastes money on is one way to funnel money back toward recreation and wilderness protection.
Another way is to truly change the culture. The USFS is still dominated by backward-looking silverculturists, extractive industry lackeys, and ass-covering careerists--or any combination of the three--who really don't see any advantage for themselves or the "outfit" by focusing on rec & wild. Start replacing these guys (the vast majority of FS administrators at the regional and DC level are, indeed, guys) with people who understand that major shifts have happened environmentally, economically, and socially since they started the govt career.
Another change would be to move away from the enforcement culture to the educational and outreach culture.
In short, we need fewer admins and forest cops and more trail crews, backcountry wilderness guards, and friendly recreation guards. Since all of these folks are underpaid seasonals, they should be made career conditional (like a permanent job, but seasonal) and paid for the professional work they do.
As for Pete Geddes's comment: your old and tired dependence on price-theory ignores the reality of whats going on out there. Value does not equal price...you should know that by know.
Want "better" managment? Change the incentives managers face.
Did you also know that The Blue Ribbon Coalition supports the privatization of our public lands? When they argue for "access", they mean they want to take the land from the feds and turn it into condos.
I'm fine with paying for upgraded services...showers, real bathrooms, campgrounds with hook-ups...if that is what you are looking for. But I'd rather it simply be an off-set fee and not be a way for a company to profit from something I supposedly already own.
Aaron S, you mentioned toll roads...many of those are privately owned by off-shore companies and they are a huge revenue producer for them, not local government. Same for those ever more popular red-light cameras. Off-shore companies making a huge profit and local government getting scraps (and in this case, causing more rear-end collisions). Montana was smart enough to outlaw them.
Bill is right, this is a bit like boiling a frog...start out slow so he doesn't jump out. But he boils in the end. Next, the concessionares will push a bill or ruling that gives them stewardship of the lands...first cousin to owning them.
So Bill, to echo above, what do we do to help? In the midst of the health care debacle, spending millions for trials for terrorists, un-winable wars and other stupidity...how do we really get anyone at the federal level to listen anymore???
The long-term goal of the Coprorate tools railing against taxes is to 'starve the beast', or render our government insolvent. The Corporate Oligarchs may then 'save' the public resources by taking ownership of the resources (or privatizing what is profitable and socializing the costs). This is why we have the privatization of schools, roads, prisons, and the military; the very things that should be funded by society as a whole through taxation. The American public is being played, and we are too scared/oblivious/indifferent to do anything about it. Once the Oligarchs have their private mercenary armies fully staffed and trained, there will be no recourse. I doubt that the 'Celebrating Conservatism' crowd will stand a chance against hardened Blackwater veterans of the Middle East oil occupations.
The grazing fee topped out at just under $ 2.00 per AUM, before the Reagan administration permanently rolled it back to a fixed $ 1.35 per AUM , where it is today . What if the Forest Circus was able to get $ 3.0m or more for an AUM , and had all their administrative and road costs for timber sales and those scammish Salvage Sales covered by the winning bidders ? Then we wouldn't be having this discussion...
Perhaps the best answer, especially for Idaho and Montana residents, is to give some real-time support to Senators Baucus and Crapo and encourage them to move ahead more rapidly with S. 868. That bill would put us back to the pre-FLERA days when we still paid some fees, such as reasonable overnight campground fees and national park entrance fees, but would prevent the FS from charging for parking, picnicking or even driving through National Forests as they now do in many states.
I believe most people were okay with the pre-2004 situation, except perhaps where the Fee-Demo "experiment" was in place in the Pacific Northwest so let's go back to it. The FS still gets part of its fee revenue, which leaves less for Congress to replace, and we can get off this slippery slope.
The second best answer might be to convince one of our 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, from any state, to introduce a companion bill to S. 868.
Third, support the few green groups currently fighting for you, mainly the Western Slope No-Fee Coalition and Wild Wilderness.
Fourth, contact your senators and representatives and try to get them to pressure the FS to reverse the trend of contracting public recreation to private companies and at the same time to increase the FS budget to replace any lost fee income.
And there's even more to do….
…If you're a member of any major green group or outdoor recreation association, work inside to convince group leaders to give some priority to fighting the fee frenzy. They were all there at the frontline when President Bush wanted to sell public lands, so where are they now?
…If you're a member of a RV or camping club, talk to your club leaders about opposing the current fee policy, and if the club is a member of a lobbying group like ARC or NFRA, try to get them to break ranks and oppose fees and instead support S. 868.
…If you see a notice in the local media about the FS proposing fee increases, get involved and oppose them.
Hope this helps……Bill
As far as salvage timber sales and grazing allotment leases, I agree, but I don't agree that it's a recreation management problem. Even though it was done in the past, I would prefer that money for recreation didn't come from timber or range. It should be a straight-out normal appropriation. Otherwise, we have to cut more and graze more just to keep the campgrounds open.
Bill
Where did THAT come from ? Please cite some specific examples of environmental organizations or individuals doing anything overt that calls for raising fees.
My personal opinion of your opinion is that you show an automatic pathological need to blame enviros for Everything , without ever stating why or showing us some evidence.
I'll give you one factoid here: The Cody representative of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition ( the guy before the rep we have now ) fought very hard to keep user fees and recreation fees low or nonexistent in National Forests around Yellowstone, and the Park itself, exactly the opposite of your wild claim. He did that many years ago, when this issue first became apparent.
And by the way , many of these contentious fee increases for recreation are due to the Bush administration going on a binge of privatizing the services offered by public land and resource agencies. By turning the campground management etc over to a concessionaire or manager, new fees were suddenly thicker than gnats.
This was definitely NOT due to environmentalists at work , so either retract your statement or back it up with some evidence.
If you were truly an wilderness-freak, you would be supporting Tester's bill, only until the new Wilderness Areas are signed in, then litigate the hell out of it to remove all those "bad things" you didn't want.
I only have my lifelong experience with the Shoshone National Forest surrounding Cody to base my comments on. This past winter, they threatened to close most of the campgrounds and severely cut back their recreational services and other " sidework" because all their budget was being sucked up by pine beetle salvage work. The Shoshone these days is a recreatonist's forest...it has some grazing allotments, almost no commercial logging ( only slavage) , and no mining. Yet they still wanted to shut down recreational facilities for lack of money. Reality bit down hard , until a token appropriation of $ 40 million to 14 Wyoming and Colorado forests for a beetle eradication fund allowed the Shoshone to keep enough money in their campground budget for the coming biennium.
But this precisely illustrates what I'm saying. The Forest Service is in the Department of Agriculture, not alongside Fish and Wildlife and BLM and Park Service in the Interior Department . Like it or not, the Forest Service being USDA is supposed to be managing the selling of trees and grass like a farm crop as their prime revenue channel for the agency paying its way. But the special interests have lobbied their way into getting prices for those commodities down to ridiculously low levels , to the point where the entire agency can't sustain itself. It has negative cash flow from commodity " sales" , but USFS is not about to tell a cattleman or logger they can't eat grass or cut trees ( let alone imperil their own GS scale job security ), so Recreation takes the hit and fees sprout like mushrooms. In effect , recreation is subsidizing grazing and logging but those multiple uses are abuses towards one another ; imiscible entities. That needs to be flattened.
I want to add one more point to this fee discussion , but it applies to the National Park Service experience. Living next to Yellowstone Park, we noticed something beginning with the Reagan administration. Maintenance was being deferred and the Park's facilities and sevices were crumbling. It became apparent that Yellowstone was falling behind , badly , because even though 3 million people paid to enter the Park every year, not enough of that gate money was actually being returned to Yellowstone where the impacts occured and maintenance money was sorely needed. Yellowstone in reality was seeing its gate money go to the federal Geneeral Fund and be appropriated back out to pay for faraway Civil War battlefields or other distant needs but not its own needs So a Republican Wyoming Senator who was not known for being kind to enviros, recreation, nonextractive industries, and " humanties" --- in other words a James Watt natural resource czarist---- had an epiphany. The late Craig Thomas got a bill through Congress allowing for modest increases in Park entrance fees, but crucially so , allowing the Park where those fees were collected to keep up to 80 percent of the fees for their own park needs. This was a godsend to Yellowstone, and much deferred maintenance is now being cleared away, and new visitors center being built with the locally collected revenue. I think the same experience could be told of Zion park and other national park units who were also falling behind the maintenance funding curve even though they were taking in quite a sum at the booths. Revenue was and is being siphoned way from the point source that collects it into the bigger pool of federal budget deficits , financial meltdowns, and wartime economy.
To my knowledge, neither the BLM nor Forest Service have a similar system of keeping more of their local revenue for their local needs. They collect the money and send it to Washington, and hope they get enough back in next year's budget to cover their needs.
Somehow, we need to have our national forests be more forthcoming about their cash flow . It's far too easy or temptible for them to just jack up other fees to compensate for their primary shortcomings.
Geddes is "right" (inasmuch as a busted clock can be right twice in 24-hours) about skewed incentives for public land managers, which I would say is but an element in the "agency capture" syndrom where public servants can be socially and ideologically captured by the very special interests they interact with the most.
As Thomas Frank has illustrated quite well in "The Wrecking Crew," the hard-right really doesn't want government to work efficiently or to follow the dictates of enlightened, independent policy and science. Instead, FREE and others of that ilk want what Grover Norquist wants, to drown government in a bathtub, leaving minimal agencies functioning (primarily the military-industrial complex) while turning everything over to the tender mercies of a super-rich elite, who won't do a great job at anything other than making massive profits (Blackwater, KBR and Halliburton come to mind as prime examples).
Ultimately, Geddes and FREE want to make money off of recreationists on public lands, knowing full well that the extraction-based industries will take steps to keep those taxpayer subsidies coming. FREE bashing timber, cattle, mining and energy companies is simply sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It completely (and perhaps deliberately) obfuscates that some people join the service (including the Forest Service, and National Park Service) because they believe in a life of public service. As in, doing something good for the country, because there is still something great about American and the great outdoors.
Just a word of warning: there are many ways to privatize public lands and the cunning of profiteers should not be underestimated.
I agree with you about the funding...taxpayer pockets etc., but I don't know for certain that there is a free ride involved.
Everyone benefits from public land whether they use it themselves for recreation or not.
The bigger concern in the article for me though, is the privatization, not the cost or the fees.
The BLM and Forest Service's own PRIA assessments used to determine where the fee should be placed both show that today's low $ 1.35 per month AUM fee needed to be at $ 3.24 or $ 3.84 to even begin to get close to a management break even point. But those are very hard figures to pin down , and it's equally difficult to compare private pasture to public pasture costs. However, it is fair to say that the fees would only go up significantly , not down , from where they are today under any economic scenario. Which is another way of saying that grazers on public lands are getting a heckuva sweet deal...a deal paid for by everyone else, including recreationists. But frankly , it's futile to compare grazing fees to recreation fees under any scenario.
Still, I have to say it: Maybe my " free " use of Forest Service trails and BLM roads is just compensation for me underwriting the cattle and sheep giveaways and those artifically low ( corrupt) grazing fees. It all washes down to the sea, eventually.
The federal grazing fee is set by a formula in the PRIA (1978) and, you are correct, it was modified (actually extended with one change that wasn't even understood at the time) in 1986. Jimmy Carter (D) was president in 1978 and both houses of Congrss were controlled by democrats. That supports my fact. Ronald Reagan extended the formula that was set to expire. He did that by executive order...something that any other president could change...hardly set in stone.
Notwithstanding, and I paraphrase, beings savagely beaten back, the democrats controlled the White House and Congress for a couple of years in the 1990's and they didn't change the fee.
My main point in what I wrote was to simply observe that a lot of the commentary seems to have a political preference/bias as evidenced by some blaming Reagan and Bush for grazing fees when equal opportunity blaming would seem more objective based on the facts. Failing looking at it that way, Reagan and Bush failures to raise the fee might be excused out of avoidance of not wanting to be "savagely beaten back"...a plausible excuse for Clinton, Babbitt, and Congress (D).
I am not a rancher but have lived among them and don't know any who fit the "Cadillac Cowboys, wingtip ranchers" sound bite. Although I have told plenty of them that they are getting a steal with the grazing fees they pay.
I would like to see the fee changed...significantly changed, but I don't believe that I have anything coming from "underwriting" much of anything for anyone albeit I pay some pretty hefty taxes. Heck, I never even paid enough taxes to cover the cost of my kid's K-12 education...and I don't know anyone else (no Cadillac Cowboy friends) who has.
Dewey, you and I would probably agree on a vast majority of things except maybe how we vote.
"geezerpower nothing is free exept the air" you'll land on it.
I ran across this on the tubes today. It's called ACUB, which seems to be some sort of miliitary privatization of environmental areas. I'm still wondering what to make of it, but it sure smells terrible ~ G: